


Color

by Ididntsignupforthisshit (myhamartia)



Series: The Hair Dye Drabbles [1]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Coping Mechanisms, Davey has a bad few days ;-;, Davey-centric, Depression, Depressive Slumps, F/M, Hair Dyeing, M/M, Multi, Newsietober 2K17, Written for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 21:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12516896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myhamartia/pseuds/Ididntsignupforthisshit
Summary: Newsietober Day 26: DaveyDavid, grasping at straws, uses an old coping mechanism to cope with his depressive slump.Or, wherein David is having a hard time in life, so he dyes his hair.





	Color

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do a lot more newsietober drabbles, but I just,,,,, idk man, it didn't work out. But I had to get Davey's day done. I couldn't let my bab down.  
> also, I've never wrote this pairing before. I hope I did it justice. Also, what in the entire heck is their ship name?? my best guess was _Jathrid _*shrugs* I'm not good at this, yo__  
>  im just dreading tagging it over on tumblr *grimaces*  
> Hope you like it <3

The apartment was too quiet without Jack and Katherine.

They were both gone for their own reasons. Kath had been pulled away by her mother for a week-long trip. A visit to a few relatives halfway across the country. David missed her.

Jack was still in town, but his presence had been very sparse in the apartment that week. Of the seven nights Katherine had been absent, Jack was gone for half of them.

They'd held each other the first two nights, cuddled against the chilly October night under the blankets. David found it bearable, comfortable in his partner's embrace.

And then for two nights afterward, Jack had phoned in late at night, saying things like, "It's getting late and the rain is pretty heavy. Think I'm gonna crash at the studio tonight, if that's okay," and the night after, "Race and Spot're in a spat. Spot's at Albert's and I offered to stay with Race."

What could David do but agree?

The next night Jack had come home after David was already asleep, smelling of paint and cheap Italian take out.

David understood. He did. He knew all about Jack's big projects that were nearing completion. He knew that Jack got wound up in work all too often. He knew Jack skimmed over details sometimes and didn't really pick up on when things were less than OK, or that  _ something _ had gone off-kilter in their lives.

And that was fine.

David was an adult. He would be  _ fine _ . He could handle a few nights on his own. He became re-accustomed to the cold sheets and empty mattresses. The cold morning kitchens, and the ghosting laughter that David longed for.

David ended up cleaning the apartment. He'd organized the closets, and the drawers. He did all the laundry and hung it up neatly in the closet. He'd washed their sheets, and later cleaned out the icebox. He spent all day after work on the apartment, trying to find some kind of order.

He threw himself into his task, telling himself that if he could just find  _ order _ than he would feel okay. His head would stop swimming and his chest would feel normal again.

He would be okay.

David wasn't a child. He could deal with his problems, invisible though they were.

When Jack came home the day before, he'd looked around. Grinned. "It looks great in here Dave!" No connection. David smiled. It was fine. Everything was fine. David hadn't just been trying to re-catch his breath in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet lid with his hands curled tightly in his hair.

It was fine.

David came back home later than normal, a plastic shopping bag crinkling in his hands. The apartment was empty. Jack was late again. Even later than David.

The apartment was too big when he was on his own. Sound bounced off the floors and played tricks in his ears. He slipped his shoes off without a noise. It was a somewhat odd game, trying to make as little noise as possible.

It was a terribly easy game.

He moved slowly, in wonderment as his socked feet made nary a squeak on the floorboards. The crinkle of the bag in his hands gave the only sound in the room as he crossed the floor, down the hallway.

He opened the door to the bathroom and shuffled in, set his bag on the counter. He wrapped his hands along the edge of the counter and looked at himself in the mirror. He took in the dark circles under his tired eyes. He looked at the blemishes scattered around his forehead and chin, lamenting how he'd disregarded his hygiene these last couple of days.

David took in the cut of his hair. He hadn't told Jack or Katherine about it since he'd had it done the day before. He kept it like a dirty little secret, never acknowledging it outright. He'd wait until they saw it. He wondered if they would notice.

He had debated telling the woman at the hair salon to shave it all off, but held off at the last possible second. That was  _ too _ much of a change. Something he would have to deal with for months to come. He would be remind of his idiocy, his ineptitude, every time he looked in the mirror or felt the closely shaved hair.

In a compromise to himself, he'd only gotten the bottom half clipped short. It was an odd feeling against his fingertips, and he wasn't quite sure if he liked it. The curls higher up on his hair were trimmed as well. It was a good haircut. He'd liked it.

And then he’d realized that it wasn't enough.

He looked in the mirror and frowned. It wasn't enough. It didn't hold the jarring effect he had hoped for. It was far too normal for that. What was a little trim and a clip going to do for him? It did nothing to silence the storm that he was braving in his head. It offered no distraction against his anxiety.

It was too plain. Not enough.

He took out the little bottles in the plastic bag and set them in front of himself.

He sighed, tapped the nails of his right hand along the white counter and stared pointedly at the little white container of hair bleach.

David had done this all before, but it had been years since the last time. He was sixteen when he discovered the old hair dye trick. It gave him something to control in an otherwise uncontrollable world. It was a piece of information that he ran with. He remembered the baby pinks and the soft greens he had tried out. Once, Les', David's younger brother convinced their mother to let David do the same to him. Les ran around with a head full of fading-red hair for a month and he was in love with it. He smiled at the memory.

With resolve, David removed his phone from his pocket and placed it on the lip of the counter, as if daring it to light up.

He'd made an agreement with himself as he'd bought the bleach and dye. If he heard from either Jack or Kath before he got started, then he would hold off on the whole  _ teenaged coping method _ . If not, then he would go through with it and deal with the consequences tomorrow.

Later. When Kath was home, and once Jack noticed.

Thirty seconds later and the phone had not come to life. It stayed dull, lifeless. David tried not to be too happy about it.

So, he took up the bottle and picked at the top, trying to get the plastic shrink wrap off of the cap.

That was, of course, when his phone finally rang.

The piercing ring cut through the silence so suddenly that David startled, his hands flinging up in the air so that the bottle was flung against the mirror. It fell with a thump to the sink and rolled for a second as if to hurl an insult at David.

He took it. Along with the call.

"Hello?" His voice was odd and uneven. The background of the caller was extremely loud, full of some current dance track and happy, laughing voices.

"Davey!" He could hear the grin in Jack's voice, but he couldn't find it in himself to match his enthusiasm. "We're at Richie's." Makes sense. Probably Albert's idea, the club was his favorite place in the world. "Boys wanted to go after dinner. You want to come out?"

David made a noncommittal noise, shrugging to himself. "I don't know, Jackie. I'm not feeling too good."

Jack made a sound not quite like a grunt. A sound akin to a distraught frown. "That ain't no good. You want me to come home?"

_ Yes _ .

David looked at the counter, with his collection of bottles. He looked in the mirror, at his hair, in his eyes.

"No, I'm good. I was just going to go to bed early, nothing big or anything." It sounded right enough. A good excuse.

"Oh. Alright then. You sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Okay. I love you."

"I love you, too." David felt heavy. "Have fun tonight."

The call ended. David replaced the phone on the counter.

He decided that, even though David had heard from Jack, he couldn't be blamed for going through with it all.

David picked up the little container of bleach and opened it up.

    He woke up to keys in the front door. He lifted his head from it's little cocoon of quilts he'd settled himself in. He was on the floor beside the foot of the couch, in the middle of a mess of quilts and throw pillows stolen from the other furniture. David squinted at the door. He'd taken out his contacts after last night's deed was done, and he knew his glasses were somewhere to the left side of the coffee table. His hands fumbled for them and he slipped them on just in time to see the apartment door swing open to two cheerfully chatting people.

Jack and Katherine came tumbling into the living room, tossing Kath's bags beside the recliner. Katherine was pulling off her coat, babbling happily while Jack listened on, grinning as he pushed the sleeves of his (David's) sweater up to his elbows.

David had forgotten all about Katherine. Jack was supposed to pick her up that morning. If that was any indication, David guessed that he’d waded through the after-effect of the night before to tender to his responsibilities.

"And it was really hilarious, I wish I could've caught it on camera!" Kath said, her voice was laced with disappointment.

"That's the most unbelievable part of the whole story, right there!" Jack said, laughing, "Kathering Clarice Pulitzer, reporter extraordinaire: caught without a camera."

"Ah, shut up," she tutted. She unzipped and rid herself of her boots before sighing happily. "Okay. Where's Davey?" She rubbed her hands together and moved out of the living area and towards the hall that led to their bedroom.

Jack wasn't far behind, walking right past David and his mound of blankets. "Probably still asleep. He wasn't feeling great last night."

He heard Kath hum faintly as she traveled farther and farther away from him.

David was suddenly very aware of himself. David, and his whole wrapped in blankets, hair very messily dyed, as he laid on the floor,  _ being _ . He attempted to wiggle further into his blankets, to cover over his head and hide everything he had done.

If the floor opened up and swallowed him whole, he wouldn't complain one bit.

He ended up flat on his back as he realized that his reckoning was coming and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.

Well.

He could run out the door while the other two were still in the bedroom. It would be easy. His keys and wallet were in the little bowl on the stand next to the door.

Ha. The fools would never know what hit them!

Or, rather... what ran away... from them...

He'd figure it out.

"David?" Katherine's call was laced with worry and David winced. There was no getting out of it, now. He worried at his lower lip as he sat up. He leaned against the foot of the couch, his bottom half still wound up in the blankets.

He was rubbing his eyes under his glasses when Jack and Katherine came back out of the hallway.

"Did he spend the night with one of the boys?" Kath asked Jack.

"He said he was going to bed early, I don't-." David got the impression that Jack shrugged his shoulders. "I crashed at Crutchie’s." David could practically sense Jack folding in on himself.

David sighed. "I'm over here," he said, his voice heavy with sleep and a thousand emotions he had tried to keep to himself.

He heard two separate relieved sighs at his voice. He knew they hadn't seen him yet, as the back of the couch blocked their view, but they knew where he was now.

"Did you sleep on the  _ floor _ ?" Jack asked, nearing David. Any second, now.

"Yeah," David answered. He let his eyes slip shut and his head fall back to hit the couch cushion. "Watched Stranger Things until I fell asleep." It was true. After his hair was finished and he had everything cleared up (the bathroom  _ sparkled _ ), he had settled down on the couch and watched Eleven's adventures through a disinterested fog.

It made him feel marginally better, though.

( _ Any second.) _

"Are you feeling any bet-," his words cut off as Jack braced his arms on the back of the couch, looking down at David.

There it was.

Jack frowned. He reached out a hand to pluck at one of David's colored curls, the question unvoiced but clearly  _ there _ .

Kath joined Jack, and it was but a second before she gasped openly. "What happened to your hair?" she asked, utterly dumbfounded.

David bit at the inside of his lip, debating whether or not he ought to spill the whole story, or try to make one up on the fly.

He tried to go with the latter option, but he couldn't make the words flow. He stammered over his opening line until he sighed in frustration. He took a breath and a long, long moment to untangle himself from his confines. He climbed up onto the couch cushions, sitting on his knees as he looked Jack and Katherine over seriously.

"I haven't had a very good couple of days," he confessed. The words tasted bitter on his tongue, but it loosened the knot that was his stomach. "It's been bad." He tried to quell the threat of tears, and he was doing a fair job. He thought that was probably because he hadn't looked up from the back of the couch. He hadn't yet looked into his partners' eyes. He knew that if he did, he wouldn't last very long at all.

His fingers picked at a seam of the cushion and he concentrated very hard on the action. Jack reached out to take his hand in very much the same movement that Katherine did.

They squeezed his hands, and he squeezed back.

"Are you okay?" Katherine asked gently. Her right hand, the one not holding David's, cupped his cheeks and gently directed him to look up at her. "Did something happen to make you feel this way?"

He shook his head, feeling those godawful tears as they tried to well up. "It's... It just  _ happens _ sometimes. I can't really control it. Or prevent it. It just. It sucks everything up and I  _ stop _ . I know that doesn't make any sense, I just can't explain it right. It makes my head all cluttered and I feel like I can't breathe. Like I have no control over  _ anything _ ."

"Hence the hair?" Jack asked. His fingers plucked at David's curls again. He ran a soothing hand in David's hair, watching how the color looked over his fingers.

David nodded miserably. “Hence the hair. And the apartment.”

Kath frowned. She looked around herself, confused. “The apartment?” she parroted.

“I deep-cleaned it.”

Understanding dawned upon her. “I  _ see _ ,” she said. “It does look very nice.”

David grunted, looking distastefully around the clean space. “It didn’t make me feel any better. Neither did the haircut, so I… took drastic measures, I guess.” He laughed hollowly. It all sounded so stupid now, as he said it allowed. He aired his laundry and found out that the dust covering it all seems so  _ insignificant _ in the sunlight. “It’s stupid,” he admitted aloud. He dropped their gazes again.

And then two pairs of strong arms circled around him and brought him close.

“It ain’t, either,” Jack told him firmly. Katherine agreed.

“Did it make you feel better?” she asked after a moment, “Coloring your hair?”

David nodded hesitantly. “Somewhat. I use to do it as a teenager. It’s been a really long time though.” He pressed his nose into Kath’s shoulder, and wound his arm tighter around Jack. “I know it looks dumb.”

“I like it,” Jack said. He pulled back enough to grin at his boyfriend. “I think it looks really good on you.”

Kath hummed. “I do too.” She freed her hands so she could run her fingers through his hair. “Suits you.”

He smiled. “I love you two.” He looked between them, eyes affectionate.

Katherine kissed him, and then Jack did.

“Will you tell us the next time you feel like this?” Jack asked.

David caught his lip between his teeth. “I’ll try,” he answered honestly. “ _ Before _ it gets to the crazy hair-dying phase.”

Kath smiled and agreed.

Jack took another second and ran his hands through David’s hair again. “I’m serious; I really like this. You did a good job.” He scratched pleasantly at his scalp. “You can do me next.”

David snorted. “Right. We’re gonna get you a really nice bubblegum pink.”

“Hey, I would be up for it.” Jack planted a kiss to David’s forehead, where the residual hair dye stained his skin.

“Next time,” David said.

He hoped that there wouldn’t be cause for a next time, but he didn’t hold his breath.

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](https://itsnewstome.tumblr.com)


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